Beard ‘of­fered to teach royal chil­dren’

REVERED his­to­rian Pro­fes­sor Mary Beard said she of­fered to be­come the per­sonal Latin tu­tor to the Duke and Duchess of Cam­bridge’s three chil­dren as she col­lected her dame­hood from Buck­ing­ham Palace.

The broad­caster, well­known for her doc­u­men­taries and ap­pear­ances on the BBC, said she would do “any­thing” to en­sure princes Ge­orge and Louis, and Princess Char­lotte, grew up with an un­der­stand­ing of the an­cient Ro­man lan­guage.

Speak­ing af­ter she re­ceived the hon­our for ser­vices to the study of clas­si­cal civil­i­sa­tion from Wil­liam at Buck­ing­ham Palace, Dame Mary said: “Of course he was very po­lite and said: ‘I’ll have to get you to teach them’, and I said: ‘Any­thing’.”

Dame Mary was at the palace five years on from re­ceiv­ing her OBE for ser­vices to clas­si­cal schol­ar­ship.

The Cam­bridge Univer­sity pro­fes­sor, 63, pre­vi­ously said she had a “touch of re­pub­li­can” about her, but felt much more com­fort­able ac­cept­ing the hon­our now.

She said: “Had some­body said to me at 23 that I would ac­cept a dame­hood of the Bri­tish Em­pire, I would have said ‘Sorry, sun­shine, that’s not what my pol­i­tics is all about’. But I’ve grown older and wiser.”